


Black Hole Sun

by LaTessitrice, maxortecho



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Not all that dark really but a bad boy, Rating may rise but probably won't, Spot the easter eggs for the show, The Dark!Max AU nobody asked for, We all love a bad boy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-15 07:56:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19609309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaTessitrice/pseuds/LaTessitrice, https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxortecho/pseuds/maxortecho
Summary: It’s been three weeks since Liz Ortecho's heard from her sister Rosa, and she knows something weird is going down in her hometown of Roswell, New Mexico. Despite her father’s insistence she stays away, Liz returns home to unravel the mystery of Rosa’s disappearance and stumbles into something bigger than she ever could have imagined. Maybe the UFO hoax Roswell is famous for wasn’t such a hoax after all…Max Evans, bounty hunter and secret alien, spends a lot of time on the road, so he doesn’t realise that when he returns to his adopted home of Roswell things have gone badly wrong. One sibling is in captivity, the other has disappeared. The only way Max can rescue both of them and keep them all alive is by joining forces with the feisty scientist who’s demanding answers about her missing sister. Except Max doesn’t like scientists, and this one’s more of a handful than most.Caught between warring alien factions and the US government, Max and Liz have one clue to finding both of their sisters: the name Noah. They’re going to have to rely on each other to unravel this mystery and survive. Then there’s the small matter of Max’s apparent destiny to contend with...





	Black Hole Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! Welcome to an epic that was meant to be a bit of fun to play around with a darker take on Max Evans. As the summary suggests, this is an AU where Max and Liz don't know each other--hopefully the story will make the rest clear.
> 
> It's me writing this but I've added maxortecho as co-creator because she really is. Not just a beta reader, she's been a sounding board to bounce ideas off and is responsible for at least 50% of the plot. She deserves just as much credit.
> 
> I am sure I had other things I wanted to say but as always, when it comes to actually adding these notes I can never remember. See you on the other side!

The 285 into Roswell is really outdoing itself in the nothingness this time around. Liz Ortecho has already driven through miles and miles of endless desert and dusty scrub land, and the distant mesas and rich ochers of the long journey have given way to dull, desaturated flatness, punctuated only by desiccated shrubbery. Even the clouds are uniform—one dense gray blanket stretching from horizon to horizon. Telephone poles line the road like a chain of crucifixes. She's done this journey a thousand times and the final stretch into town never fails to remind her why she'd been so happy to leave a decade ago. No hills, no hint of green, and this time not even other vehicles.

Except for the asshole in front of her.

The jeep had been behind her since maybe Santa Fe, but after the last big turn-off he'd overtaken her, then slowed right down, cruising in the center of the road without leaving any room for her to get back in front.

She says "he" because she'd caught a glimpse as he sailed past, and she says "asshole" because, well, that's how he's driving. She doesn't know what game he's playing and despite sitting on her horn, he doesn't seem inclined to let her know what it is either.

They approach the turn-off for the 70, the town finally becoming a dirty smudge in front of them, and still there are no other vehicles coming in any direction. Roswell is sleepy, sure, but this is strange for the middle of the day. Something's rotten in the state of New Mexico—but that's why she's here, isn't it?

When she makes no move to take the turn-off, the jeep picks up speed and pulls away, only to jerk sideways across both lanes and screech to a halt, completely blocking the way.

Liz slams on her brakes and yells in frustration. " _¡No mames!_ "

When the asshole climbs out of the jeep, she double checks her doors are locked. She's got a crowbar under the driver's seat, but she doesn't reach for it. Not yet. Instead she grips the wheel, white-knuckled, foot on the gas ready to go if she needs to, glaring at the sudden roadblock.

He saunters to Liz's car, face hidden and shadowed under the brim of a black stetson. He's wearing a ratty, faded t-shirt and his long denim-clad legs end in cowboy boots. His hands are empty and held loosely at his side as he swaggers over. No weapon that she can see, not even a holster.

In that case.

She rolls down the window, shouting before he even reaches her.

"What the hell is your problem, _idiota_?"

If anything, he only seems amused by the yelling. He finishes taking his time to reach her window, standing with one arm casually resting on the roof of her car before he replies. He's got shades on, so even up close she can't see his eyes, but she catches a glimpse of a strong jawline under a few weeks' worth of dark scruff. She's more focused on the way his mouth is smirking, and a knot of rage burns through her.

"Are you just going to stand there, _gringo_ , or are you going to tell me why you've been driving like my grandmother?"

"Colorado plates," he says, like it's any kind of explanation.

"You can read! That's good. You can read, but you can't drive."

The smirk deepens, and she's got the urge to run him over. "You're from out of town." He's got a deep, gravelly voice with the edge of a drawl to it, and she's not sure if this guy could be any more of a cliché if he tried. He seems to be about her age—hard to tell with the shades in the way—but he didn't go to school with her, so it's rich for him to be accusing her of not being local. "Now's really not a good time to be visiting."

She glares at him. "I'm not a tourist." Stops herself before she starts telling him more than he needs to know: about how she'd grown up here, about how her family run the famous Crashdown Cafe, about Rosa—

She doesn't need to tell him anything at all.

"Still," he continues, "if you can avoid Roswell, I'd advise it. Even to pass through."

"Who even are you?"

He shakes his head. "Doesn't matter who I am. Just take the friendly warning."

"Forgive me for needing a little more than that," she tells him, because he doesn't need to know she didn't want to come back to Roswell at all, but she had to. For Rosa's sake. "Are you going to move your car, or am I going to have to call the sheriff?"

"Pretty sure the sheriff has more important things to deal with," he says, and it's as ominous as everything else he's said.

"Maybe. But she _is_ an old family friend so I'm sure she can dispatch a deputy or two to deal with you blocking the highway. Or should I just ram your car out of the way instead?"

His mouth twists. She's pretty sure he's trying not to laugh at her. "Have it your way."

He gives the roof of her car a tap before he swaggers back to the jeep, and it's the kind of walk that suggests he's used to people watching him go. It's a nice ass, but all Liz wants to do right now is run it into the asphalt.

She gives the horn one last good ride instead. Then he's off, speed no issue now, and Liz can finally make her return to Roswell.

God help her.

* * *

The encounter with the spitfire Latina on the road is the first, and so far only, highlight of Max Evans' time in Roswell.

She was easy on the eyes and delightfully caustic, though she also reminded him of someone, and he can't put his finger on who. But apparently a pretty face—a few glances of her reflection in her side mirror—is enough to urge him to try and give her a friendly warning about coming through town, even if she refused to listen. She'll learn, and Max won't be around to witness it or help her out.

He has bigger problems right now.

He's waved through the roadblock—Sheriff Valenti recognizes his jeep—and continues down Main Street, turning off towards Isobel's apartment complex a few blocks from the heart of town. The Crashdown is open, and he's tempted to swing by for a shake, but he doesn't want to spend too long in town. Not if he can help it.

Only as he passes the diner by does he figure out who the Latina reminded him of. The girl who'd served him the last few times he went in—Arturo Ortecho's daughter. Is he imagining the family resemblance there?

The thought of a shake is only a distraction from why he's really bothered coming back into Roswell: he's hoping that while he's been out of town, Isobel's come home. But her car's still here in the apartment lot, and when he enters the lobby, her mail is cluttering up the cubbyhole.

He grabs the pile of mail and heads up to her apartment, letting himself in with the spare key. His sister's place is just as it was the last time he was here—tastefully decorated, and nothing out of place. The only sign that anything is wrong is the lack of Isobel herself—and she left without packing so much as her toothbrush.

Three weeks and not a word.

Max thumbs through the stack, pacing in her tiny kitchen as he does so, carefully opening and scanning each item before discarding them on the much larger pile of mail he's already combed through for clues. Nothing about Isobel's life had changed before she disappeared, and a credit card statement has arrived since he last checked, but it's empty. That in itself is worrying. She stopped using it when she vanished, just like her phone dropped out of service, preventing him from tracking her that way.

This is what Max does. He's a bounty hunter—he finds people, even when they don't want to be found. But when it comes to Isobel, he's failing. Doing nothing but running into dead ends and brick walls.

He leaves the apartment, retreating to his jeep so he can head to his own house on the edge of town. He's spent more time here lately than he ever normally would, coming back as soon as he felt his connection to Isobel go cold.

It had woken him from sleep in some crappy motel in the north of the state, like being doused in a bucket of ice. His sister's warm, eternal presence, shut off abruptly, enough to drag him from slumber and back down to her hometown. All his life she'd been there, even when she got adopted and he ended up in the foster system, shipped from home to home. He might have been miles away from her in Roswell but she was always tethered to him by the bond they shared. Until that day.

There hasn't been a flicker from her since.

The drive down the rest of Main Street leaves his skin crawling, and it's not just the raw wound that is Isobel's missing presence. The town is different now, everybody watching everybody else. Wondering. Trying to figure out who's who, and what faction, if any people belong to. Max doesn't want to attract any attention—he never has—and he's all too sure that Isobel's situation is tied up in what's going on in the town.

Like Michael. He's here, a thin thread on the edge of Max's consciousness, but it's a whole other issue trying to figure out where he is and how to get him back.

One sibling at a time.

Max's house is tucked out into the desert, as he likes it, on a big plot of land. It's a ranch in the local style, all earth-toned stucco and curves. Isobel designed the interior, paying more attention to the Navajo rugs and cushions then he would ever care about, given how little time he usually spent here. He'd once asked why she didn't move in, but she insisted on being in the center of town for her social life. Why she stays in Roswell, a two-horse town where one of the metaphorical horses has long since gone lame and been put out of its misery, for her social life makes no sense. Isobel Bracken makes her own rules.

The only thing in his fridge is beer. Maybe a takeout dinner from the Crashdown wasn't such a bad idea after all, but he'll be damned if he's heading back out there now. The less time he spends in town where the newcomers and the military can assess him, size him up, wonder about his background, the better. He grabs a bottle before traipsing into his garage, which he's long since repurposed as a weapon store and workshop. Right now, he's got a corkboard pinned to the wall, all of his scant breadcrumbs to Isobel tacked in place. Nothing new to add. Not a clue where to go next.

"Come on, Iz," he says out loud, aware he's finally given into talking to himself. All those years of solitude and he never had, because he'd never really been alone. And now... "Give me something to work with."

There's nothing but silence back.

* * *

Liz has barely got back up to speed before the roadblock comes into view. A real one this time.

"What the—?"

It's not like she doesn't know something is wrong in Roswell. She wouldn't be here if things were fine, since ordinarily Liz only returns for special occasions, and even the holidays don't seem special enough lately. But this roadblock, following her encounter with the welcome wagon minutes ago, is unexpected and makes her concern spike. When her father told her not to come—practically begged her to stay away, despite everything— she hadn't thought it was as bad as this.

Even if she still doesn't know what _this_ is.

She's fishing around in her bag for her passport when Mrs. Valenti— _Sheriff_ Valenti, now, Liz corrects herself—comes up to tap on the car window, which Liz dutifully winds down.

"Elizabeth Ortecho!" the other woman says in surprise, and Liz abandons the search for her passport. Sometimes small towns have their benefits, even if her high school boyfriend's mother recognizing her is a pretty minor one.

"Sheriff," she responds. "It's a little early in the day for a DWI checkpoint, isn't it?" There's no sign of ICE either—not that ICE would normally set up right at the top end of Main Street.

"It's not that," the sheriff replies, though she makes no attempt to explain what the roadblock _is_ for. Nor does she ask what brings Liz to town. Her office has fielded enough calls from Liz in the past few weeks. "Do you really need to be here?"

"Have you found Rosa?"

The sheriff avoids meeting her gaze. Liz takes that for a _no_. Nobody seems to be taking Rosa's disappearance seriously, insinuating she'd got bored of looking after her father and returned to California. They were all judging Rosa on the girl she'd been ten years before, not the woman she was now: the one who'd dropped her life six weeks ago to trek back to New Mexico and take care of Arturo when he came out of hospital.

"I'm not supposed to let anybody into town," the sheriff says instead of answering Liz's question, "only through it, unless they live here or have urgent business."

"I do have urgent business. My father is ill and he needs taking care of."

"And there's no way of making alternative arrangements?"

Liz can't help but glare at the sheriff. " _Rosa_ was the arrangement." Until she vanished three weeks ago. "I'm the alternative."

"Right." The answer is almost apologetic. The sheriff glances down the long stretch of Main Street, where the usual flow of traffic is absent and the sidewalks are almost empty. "I'll let you through, but promise me you'll keep your head down while you're in town. And you'll need to come find me if you want to leave."

"Oh-kay."

"The military is all but running the town now, Liz. I don't like it, but believe me when I say they're the lesser of two evils. Keep yourself safe."

She steps away, waving her arm at her deputy—a tall blonde who looks like she ought to be on a runway somewhere, not here in an unflattering beige uniform—to shift the barrier.

Liz doesn't move. "And Rosa?"

The sheriff hesitates before replying. "We're doing all we can."

To Liz's ears, it sounds like that isn't much at all, but she recognizes she's not going to get answers at a roadblock. Instead she maneuvers her way through, and within a minute she's pulling into her usual space behind the Crashdown.

It's a tight fit because not only is her father's car here—wedged in at the back of the family lot, where he can't be tempted to drive it, against doctor's orders—but Rosa's is too. Her pride and joy, a beat-up, mint-green VW Beetle, waiting for its owner to return. Liz taps its bonnet in recognition as she passes by.

She only bothers to grab her overnight bag before heading round to the front door of the diner, swinging through to find her father wiping down tables.

" _Papi!_ "

He freezes, drops the cloth on the tabletop, and turns to face her.

He's thin, thinner than he was at Christmas, and Liz feels a twinge of guilt that it's been six months since she's seen him despite his illness. She's been busy with work, but that's no excuse—not when his face is lined and gaunt like this. She'd known he was downplaying how ill he was, but had Rosa been too?

She doesn't miss the flash of hope which dies out at the sight of her. He's not the daughter he'd hoped would walk in here today. His already ashen face grows even paler, his expression turning to distress.

"Elizabeth, I told you not to come."

"And the doctors told you to take it easy!" She drops her bag into the nearest vacant booth and marches over to pick up the cloth. "What are you doing down here? Carlos, why are you letting him work?"

Carlos, the cook, holds his hands up in the universal gesture for _leave me out of it_ , and backs into the kitchen.

Her father gestures around at the diner, where only a handful of people are eating, far quieter than it would normally be at this time. "We're hardly rushed off our feet, _mija_ , and we're short-staffed. What am I supposed to do, close the diner?"

"Yes, if you need to! But I'm here now, so you need to go upstairs and _rest_. I will take over out here."

His distress hasn't diminished any. "No. I meant it—you shouldn't have come to Roswell." He doesn't realize it, but the antenna bobbing away on his head only undermine what he's saying.

"You're the third person to say that to me today. Doesn't matter, I'm here now. I'm going to take care of you, and I'm going to find out where Rosa is."

Liz didn't think he had any color to lose from his cheeks, but he manages it. "You can't. You shouldn't."

"Why is everybody acting like this is no big deal?" Her voice is rising, but she doesn't care if the customers are staring. "Her car is right outside—she hasn't gone anywhere—but the sheriff is acting like it's perfectly normal for her to vanish into thin air, and you're more concerned with keeping me out of town!"

"For good reason, Elizabeth." Her father sags, slumping into the closest chair. "I can't lose you as well. If they've taken Rosa, how do I know they won't take you too?"

" _Papi_ , you're making no sense. Who has Rosa?"

He looks up at her, as grave as he's even been, even graver than when her mother left, never to return. It's why she takes his next words seriously, even though they're ridiculous.

"The aliens. The aliens have returned to Roswell, and they have Rosa."

* * *

Max is dining on pizza, the last thing left in his freezer, when the sheriff arrives. He shoves half a slice into his mouth when she raps on the door, to quell his ravenous belly, swallowing it largely unchewed before answering. He forgets sometimes that he can't survive on coffee and beer, grabbing snacks at gas stations and truck stop diners until his body starts demanding real sustenance.

She's still in her uniform, though her hat has been discarded somewhere, and she looks wearier than Max has ever seen her.

"Evans," she says in greeting. "Successful job?"

"It'll keep the lights on." If it was anyone else, he'd invite her inside, offer her a beer, but the sheriff doesn't drink, and this isn't really a house call. "What's the latest?"

"Nobody else has gone missing, but Master Sergeant Manes has made no progress either. Seems like we're at a stalemate."

"We can't give them what they want, but they can't attack us until they have it."

"Exactly. I know Manes has something up his sleeve, but he won't share it with me. Probably because he knows I won't like whatever it is."

Max knows the last six weeks have taken their toll on the sheriff. Not only has she come to learn that the 1947 UFO crash was real, and so were aliens, but that her husband had been wrapped up in it all his life. Worse, an alien had been responsible for his death, and Jesse Manes had known all along. Despite that, her stance has been communication and negotiation with the new arrivals—the preservation of life, wherever possible.

"And he's made no headway in finding out where they're keeping the hostages?" he asks her.

"I don't believe they're his priority. Manes sees himself as having a higher mission—if a small town loses a few of its people, he's okay with that if the rest of the world is kept safe."

"Not you."

"These are my people, Evans. It's my job to protect them. I'm just thankful somebody still has Manes on a leash right now."

"Right. We need to figure out how to give them what they want before he's unleashed."

That's tricky, because as far as Max is aware, what the aliens want is _him_.

The sheriff sighs. "Easier said than done. In the meantime, I need you to focus on tracking down this Noah. He might be our key to unraveling it all."

"I'm giving it everything I've got."

On his own once more, Max retrieves his last beer from the fridge and heads back into the garage. Working with the sheriff is delicate, when he's trying to make sure nobody finds out who he is. He definitely doesn't need her, or Jesse Manes, knowing he's what the aliens want.

That's the demand they're making: for the people of Roswell to hand over "The Three"—the healer, the dreamwalker, and the animator, a set of aliens who'd been on Earth since 1947. The demands for the animator ended when they captured Michael. That makes Max the healer, and he presumes Isobel is the dreamwalker, even if she's always insisted that she's an _influencer_. It's also how he knows neither side has Isobel—they're still trying to find her, so something else entirely has happened to her.

The situation is further complicated by there being two apparent factions of aliens, one arriving hot on the heels of the other, each asking for the same thing. They've had frequent skirmishes out in the desert, and one side has been swelled by an outbreak of captive aliens from a prison north of Roswell. Aliens who've been there since the crash that brought Max and his siblings to Earth. It was a hell of a way to find out they weren't the only survivors after all, but he has no idea which side is friendly, if either, or which side holds Michael.

Why now? Why not when they'd emerged from the pods 21 years ago? Though they'd never been able to understand what had awoken them in 1997 either. Certainly not another alien, or they wouldn't have been found wandering through the desert, lost and alone, ready to be abandoned to the Chaves County foster care system.

At least the Brackens had rescued Isobel from that in the first few weeks and given her a real home.

So he has no intention of handing himself over to anyone. Nor does he intend to let any of the humans figure out that he's an alien, not when they've overlooked him as being too young to fit the profile. Instead he's doing everything he can to track Isobel down, and then he can work on finding out where Michael is.

The sheriff is right—Noah is his only remaining lead to finding Isobel. As far as anyone can tell, he appeared at the same time as the aliens landed but before they made their presence known in town, and he was the last person seen speaking to Isobel before she disappeared. But other than a few glimpses on CCTV, he's a ghost.

Another alien.

The other aliens come to and from town, secure in their safety while they hold hostages, but nobody's seen him in weeks. Not since Isobel vanished, and it can't be a coincidence.

A grainy still image is pinned to the corkboard: Noah's face. Dark hair and eyes, tanned skin, chiseled features. But there's something wild about those eyes even in the image, something that makes the hairs down Max's spine stand on end. Noah isn't only an alien—he's a dangerous one. And Max is sure he's behind Isobel's disappearance.

* * *

Liz throws herself down onto a bar stool right in front of Maria, who is wiping down the counter, lost in her own world. The Wild Pony is as uncharacteristically quiet as the rest of town, even the deadbeat racists nowhere to be found.

"Give me tequila," Liz demands. "All of it."

Maria's attention snaps to her, and her expression cycles through the same shock she's seen on everybody in town so far. The only difference is Maria rounds it off with a broad, genuine smile. "Liz! I didn't know you were back in town?"

She dutifully pours a shot out and places it on the counter, which Liz tosses back, grimacing at the way it burns even as she relishes the warmth it brings. "I just got back today. And boy, what a day it's been." She taps the shot glass, waiting for Maria to refill it.

"So you've heard about—"

"The aliens? Oh yeah." The second shot goes down more smoothly. "How apparently two different alien squads landed in the desert outside of Roswell a month ago, immediately took hostages, and are now in a stand-off with each other and the military because nobody wants to start shooting first?"

Not to mention all the aliens having sci-fi powers, some of them pretty lethal. Carlos had come out of the kitchen while Arturo was explaining the situation to Liz to confirm he'd seen a soldier get contact burns when he'd stopped someone to demand their identification. The aliens look human, he told her, and some of them are just wandering around town. It means the military refuse to evacuate the town because they can no longer be sure who's human and who isn't, not without endangering soldiers. That, and the story would spread with the outward migration of residents, and they're doing everything they can to keep the truth under wraps.

"Rosa's not a hostage and nobody knows where she is," she finishes. "And nobody seems to care except us."

Liz slams the glass down, upside down this time, because suddenly she's lost her taste for tequila, her mouth turned sour with the reminder of Rosa.

"What has the sheriff said?" Maria asks.

"They've done what they can, whatever that means."

Maria shakes her head. "They haven't even been in to ask me about her. I know they're busy with other stuff—" she waves her hand vaguely to indicate aliens "—but even when I told them about that night, they didn't seem interested."

Liz sits up straighter in the bar stool. "You saw her that night?" All her father has been able to tell her is that Rosa didn't come home. He hadn't even known where she'd gone.

"Sure. She was here, keeping me company. I told her not to walk home, but she insisted it was only a couple of blocks and that's half a tank of gas in her Beetle. I should have insisted, especially because there was this guy—"

"What guy?"

Maria shrugs. "He was only drinking water, but he was kind of intense. Sweaty, too, and watching her like a hawk. Only he left before her so I didn't think any more of it. I wish I could tell you more about him, but I haven't seen him since. The only thing I know is that he told her his name was Noah."

"Noah." Liz has a clue. She knows in her bones Noah had something to do with Rosa's disappearance—she's also pretty damn sure he's not human.

"Yeah. I told the sheriff, she said she was looking into it, but I never heard anything back."

Sheriff Valenti's reaction makes more sense now. She must have figured out this Noah had something to do with Rosa's disappearance—and that he was probably an alien. That means she'd be hamstrung by the military taking control of all things alien-related.

If Liz wants to find out what happened to Rosa, she needs to go to the people with the power to help.

"It's nice seeing you for more than the holidays," Maria says, "even if the circumstances are crappy."

"I wish I could say it's nice to be here, but I left my project at a delicate stage and I've no guarantee of getting picked up on another one."

"How's Diego?" Maria glances at Liz's left hand, then frowns. "Wait, where's the ring? I wanted to see it in person."

Liz moves her hand—and its empty ring finger—out of sight. "I haven't told my dad yet, I wanted to wait until things were settled."

"More settled than getting engaged?"

"I still need to introduce them, it's delicate, you know how _papi_ can be!" She finds herself reaching for the pendant at her throat, the one Rosa designed for her college graduation. A turquoise heart encased in silver. "Hey. If I wanted to get in touch with somebody who's dealing with the aliens, how would I do that?"

Maria leans across the bar to take her hand. "Liz, honey, no. These people are dangerous. You need to leave it to the ones who can protect us."

"I'm not proposing hunting for aliens myself. Just...maybe asking for them for help in figuring out where Rosa is."

Maria shakes her head once more, but she gives Liz a lead anyway. "Jesse Manes seems to be heading things up."

"Alex's dad?"

"Yeah, he's back in town too. I hear they're trying to come up with a weapon which will take out the aliens without harming the hostages."

Liz is already texting Alex. _Need a biomedical engineer on your team?_

No matter what she says to Maria, Liz knows the military won't care about tracking Rosa down. Not when there's the town—or the world—at stake. But if she can find a way of arming herself against the aliens, she's in with a chance of unraveling the mystery on her own.

* * *

Another week—more—has ticked by, and Max is no closer to any of the answers he wants. He's stuck in Roswell, staring at the goddamn corkboard in his garage, hoping the pieces will shift together into a solution like a Magic-Eye puzzle. No jobs have come in, at least none worth taking, and the sheriff isn't even trying to figure out who has Michael.

He's also out of beer. It's a minor tragedy in the mess of his life, but the liquor stores are experiencing delivery problems in the current climate, so his only refuge is the Wild Pony.

It's barely sunset when he climbs into his jeep, but time of day has never been an issue for Max when it comes to drinking. He rarely drinks enough to get drunk—he prefers a clear head, which is why he rarely touches acetone—but somewhere like the Pony always provides a little company and entertainment. Besides, Deluca always has her ear to the ground.

He passes the turn off for the Foster ranch, where Michael had been living and working a few months ago, before the Air Force requisitioned the land for a new facility. Sometimes Max wonders if that was what brought the aliens—something about the ground where the ship crashed all those years ago being raked over triggering some kind of signal—but he knows there's nothing alien left out there. Michael had been over every inch of the ranch repeatedly over the years and anything unearthly was in the bunker at Sanders' junk yard, where Michael moonlighted as a mechanic.

Maybe Michael himself was the one to summon them. He'd poked around with the pieces enough, trying and failing to figure out how the ship went together.

Who'd have thought that when their people arrived, they'd find themselves in danger?

Max was away when the aliens first came into Roswell, in Vegas working a big job for a bigger payday. He always extended these trips to follow up his own research: stories about UFOs, miracle healing, telekinesis, alien abduction. Anything and everything related to himself or his siblings, and he'd follow up on it, hoping that maybe this time there'd be some kind of clue about _home_. But he'd got nothing except scraps and tantalizing hints over the years, and the Nevada trip turned out to involve drunk tourists. Again.

The only interesting thing about the trip was Michael's breathless voicemail at 10am—the middle of the frickin' night, as far as Max is concerned.

_"They're here, Max, they're finally here! I'm going to go speak to them today."_

And that was that. Michael went into their ship and did not come back out, instead sending out a long warning signal of _pain._ A silent scream he hadn't made since adolescence, ringing through Max like someone had taken a drill to his nerve endings. Acetone took the edge off, but he hadn't dared drown the feeling, not when it might shut out any more cries from his brother.

Max should never have left Roswell when he got back to town, frantic to find out what had happened to Michael. No, he should've found a way to get Isobel out of town when the truth about the aliens emerged. Instead he'd been chasing somebody down to ingratiate himself with Jesse Manes, hoping it would lead to finding Michael sooner. Isobel was left vulnerable. She never used her powers, not like her brothers, and hers couldn't be used to defend herself like theirs anyway.

The Pony's parking lot isn't as empty as it has been lately, and Max hopes it doesn't mean this well will run dry too.

Deluca's the only one manning the bar, and she greets him with a raised chin, cocking her head towards his usual bar stool. She's already got a beer down on the counter before he's made it over.

He tosses a ten down—he never pays for information if he can avoid it, but the service in the Pony is always worth a decent tip—and finds himself smiling for the first time in days.

"You're a sight for sore eyes, Deluca," he says, taking a long draw on the cold, cold beer.

Her answering smile is less genuine. "I'm glad to see you this evening. We've got some new guests."

He'd clocked them on his way in, but isn't sure if they're military. The haircuts on the group gathered around the pool tables is right, but the feel of them is all wrong. Maria's instincts are solid; not human.

He keeps his voice low when he replies. "Any trouble so far?"

"They're lousy tippers," she grumbles. "I swear I've had some of them in here before, but this is the first time so many have been so bold."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "You didn't call the sheriff? Manes?"

She shakes her head, like it's a ridiculous idea. "I don't want my bar becoming a war zone, Evans. I've got bills to pay, and no intention of spending all my money on spackling over bullet holes in the walls."

"Maybe they appreciated the hospitality." He raises the bottle towards her in a mock-toast. "Maybe invading the planet is thirsty business."

Despite his attempts at humor, he feels like there's a target on his back. He can sense them, this close, like pinpricks on the edge of his mind, and for the first time he wants to swallow enough acetone to dull the feeling. Even if it's only to keep _them_ out.

He's ready to cut his losses and get out of here, gulping down the last of his beer, but the slow widening of Maria's eyes as she looks over his shoulder suggests a new kind of trouble has arrived.

"Liz?" she asks tentatively. "What are you doing here?"

He follows Maria's gaze to find the Latina with the Colorado plates stood behind him, mouth firm in resolve and eyes steely.

A new kind of trouble indeed.

* * *

Liz is distracted from Maria's question by her company. Slouching against the bar, looking every inch of trouble—and apparently that's a _lot_ of inches—is the asshole who tried to stop her entering Roswell.

He obviously recognizes her too, if the faint smirk gracing his face is anything to go by.

He's dressed much the same, though the cowboy hat and shades are nowhere to be seen, so she can see his hair is as dark as her own, a messy crown of curls that falls halfway down his neck. His eyes are dark too, and in one ear several piercings glint as they catch the lights above the bar. The band logo on the t-shirt is too worn for her to make out, and his wrists are adorned in a multitude of leather bracelets.

All of which tells her he goes to a lot of trouble to look like trouble.

"Liz?" Maria asks again. She glances around, drops her voice. "It's not safe for you to be here."

Liz scoots all the way up to the bar—right next to the asshole—and leans in closer to Maria. "Then it's not safe for you to be here either," she points out.

"I don't have a lot of choice. Bills to pay," Maria reminds her. Bills keeping her mother, Mimi, in residential care while her mind and memory deteriorates.

"What if I might have a way of protecting yourself against— _them_?"

She gives the asshole a sideways glare, because he's clearly, openly listening to their conversation. Sure, it's being held a few feet away from him, but she hopes he'll get the hint and leave.

Instead, the smirk deepens into a grin. He probably thinks it's charming, lopsided in the way romantic heroes are meant to smile, but mostly it's annoying her.

"Don't mind Evans," Maria says. "He only _looks_ like he crawled out of a jail cell an hour ago and will be back there before dawn."

"None taken," the asshole—Evans—drawls.

"He's actually good people," she continues with a wink at him. "Or at least, he always pays his tab, and has never tried telling me he can't be racist because he likes my tits."

"Was that Hank or Wyatt?" he asks.

"Both. On separate occasions. But anything you can say to me, Liz, you can say in front of Evans."

Liz isn't convinced, but at least it seems like Maria has herself an attack dog while Evans is here in the bar. She glances around before continuing. "You know how I told you I went to Jesse Manes and told him I wanted to do whatever I could to help?" Maria nods that she does, and Evans looks vaguely intrigued. "He got me lab space and wants me to create something to take down the aliens using their DNA."

Not that Project Shepherd isn't working on something much bigger, but Manes doesn't trust her enough yet to bring her in on that. In return, she's not exactly being fully truthful with Manes. Something about his cold stare and relentless focus unnerves her and makes her unwilling to put all of her work in his hands. She only wants the ability to incapacitate aliens—to protect herself and others, and get information out of them, if possible. He wants her to help create a weapon that will kill them in close combat.

She retrieves a vial and syringe from her handbag and slides it across the bar to Maria, with Evans acting as a handy shield between them and the rest of the bar. "Keep that close and hidden," she tells Maria, who immediately tucks it into her pocket.

"What is it?" Maria asks.

"It's a serum which should block an alien's powers, making them as harmless as any human."

Evans has gone very still, the smile completely wiped off his face. "You did that in a week?" He's more than stunned—he's difficult to read, but she'd almost think he's become nervous. But this is not the kind of man who gets nervous easily, so it's probably something else.

She nods. "I've not been able to test it because I don't want Manes knowing I think I've perfected it. He doesn't know I have these—I had to sneak this batch out of the lab in tampon wrappers."

"That old trick?" says Maria.

"I want you to have it, if the aliens really are coming in here to drink. I know you haven't seen Noah since that night, but—"

"Wait." Evans' mood shifts again. "Noah?"

"You know him?"

He's cagey. "His name might be of interest. You?"

But her interest has been snagged by the way the group around the pool tables are now watching them. Like they might be able to strip the skin off her bones without touching her—and she doesn't know if any of them might actually be able to do that. She doesn't like the scrutiny.

"I'm out of here," she tells Maria. "If you need to use that, do it. At worst, it's back-up for your sawn-off."

She vaguely nods in the direction of Evans instead of actually saying goodbye to him, and heads for the exit. Before she steps out into the night, she's got a vial loaded into the syringe, tucked into the palm of her hand.

The parking lot is empty, as it should be, and she practically jogs across it and onto the road. It's only a few blocks to the Crashdown, on a brightly lit street. There are military and cops patrolling everywhere. It'll be fine. She'll be fine.

Except the road is deserted—she's between patrols, or they're massively overstating their presence. All she can hear is her own footsteps and her own breath. For someone so smart, she makes drastically poor choices sometimes.

Is this what it was like for Rosa?

There's no warning. The shadows she's walking through become solid shapes and she's grabbed from behind, mouth covered to smother her screams.

It's a reflex motion, more than anything, that finds herself stabbing the syringe into the meat of the thigh of whoever has her in their grip.

They hiss, moving away, pacing in front of Liz. A woman, tall and red-haired, pale skin shining a sickly yellow under the streetlights. "What was that?" she asks, but Liz can't reply—she's frozen in place. Not through her own fear, though that's tangible, thick enough in her throat to steal her voice anyway—but this is something else.

She cannot move a muscle, only whimper in protest.

"Never mind," the woman says. "As you can see, I don't need to hold you to _hold_ you."

From a holster at her hip, she slides a revolver, aiming the barrel at Liz's chest.

Panic spikes, and Liz can barely breathe.

"We want the healer," she says, "but they're refusing to reveal themselves." Her index finger moves to the trigger.

Over her shoulder, Evans' pale, panicked face appears, but the bullet has already been fired.

**Author's Note:**

> Regular posting schedules who?


End file.
